Sea god with trident and serpent on forearm

The tide was making when Father took the engraving down from the saloon wall at Upnor and wrapped it in oilcloth. You know the one, the sea king rising out of grey water with his three-pronged fork raised and the great serpent curling beneath him like a cable paid out from a winch. He says the frame was salvaged from a Chatham dockyard sale and the print came off a wreck he never named. I think he simply liked the fine hatched lines, like wind combing a slate.

He has been poorly since the spring, and on Sunday he asked me to take the Mary Ellen down to Gravesend myself. I told him I'd manage. I have steered her through the Medway bends since I was twelve, but I had never looked at the water the way he did, reading it for the place where the bottom rose and the current folded back on itself. Past the Hoo marshes, a dark shape seemed to lift out of the mud, all jaw and teeth, and I swung the tiller hard without thinking.

It was only a drowned post with a crust of rusted iron on its top. I laughed at myself, then sat on the hatch and cried for a while, because Father would never again stand in the bow and point the boathook at the sea as though the sea owed him money.

I have hung the engraving in the wheelhouse now, where the lamp catches the waves. Come home when your ship is paid off and bring the new ledger. The sea king is watching the channel, and I find I like having something so unbending on my side.

Love, Nell